27 July 2006

Long before the outbreak of the First World War the major Powers, such as Russia, France, Britain, Germany and others, were vying with one another to gain ascendance and influence in the Near and Middle East. The main country which, in both the economic and strategic sense, became their arena of conflicts before, during and after the war, was the Ottoman state. The ambitions of some of these Powers were directed towards infiltration into that state in order to exploit its vast and practically untouched resources, to incorporate it into their orbit of influence, and finally to dismember and partition it among themselves.

It was mainly for economic reasons that the major expansionist Powers, from the earliest part of the nineteenth century onwards, began to send into Ottoman territories travellers, archaeologists, missionaries, and various other agents, in various guises. Through them they mapped the areas of strategic, economic and political importance, and established relations with Ottoman Christian and Muslim communities which they could use and exploit in their designs. It did not take them long to discover that they could easily influence and use some, if not all, of the leaders of such communities, especially of the Greeks, the Assyrians and the Armenians.

These Powers, through their agents, employed various methods in trying to bring these communities under their influence: religious antagonisms and sectarianism, promise of economic boons, the protégé system of granting protection to them,[1] human rights issues, and finally promises of autonomy, even of independence. Most of these promises were false, as these Powers were not so much interested in Ottoman minorities as in the lands and territories which they inhabited. Nevertheless some of the leaders of these communities were deceived by such promises and allowed themselves to be manipulated by these Powers in their quest to dismember the Ottoman state.

The intrigues, incitements and plots of such Powers soon led to terrorism and revolts by the militants of Ottoman minority communities, causing periodic instability, restlessness and crises in the Ottoman state. This situation dragged on until the eruption of the First World War. That war, in which the Ottoman government fought for the very existence of the state, brought catastrophe to all the peoples of Anatolia (Asia Minor), mainly to the Turks, other Muslims, and Christians, including Armenians. This paper will trace the main events that led to that war, and its aftermath, and to its effects on Turco-Armenian relations.

ARMENIANS UNDER OTTOMAN RULE

The Turks began their influx into Anatolia after having overwhelmingly defeated the military forces of the Byzantine Empire at the battle of Malazgirt (Manzikert) in 1071 C.E.(Common Era) and laid the foundation of the Ottoman state, which, in its heyday, stretched over three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe. The Ottomans' conquests brought under their sway many non-Muslim peoples, including Christians, Jews and others. As the Ottoman state was organised on Islamic principles, the ‘People of the Book’ or of ‘scripture’ (Ahl al-Kitab) such as Christians and Jews, were allowed to retain their religion, and to benefit from Turkish/Muslim tolerance. Their lives, liberties, properties and religions were guaranteed in return for the payment of special taxes and acceptance of a lower status to that of the Muslims. According to Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, they enjoyed a considerable measure of communal autonomy.[2]

As Ottoman power spread into the Balkans, some of the Orthodox Christians adopted Islam.[3] However, there was no general and forcible Islamisation of Christians within Ottoman territories, as confirmed by the late Professor Douglas Dakin, and others.[4] The Ottomans adopted a conciliatory policy towards the Christians and Jews from the very beginning.[5]

The Armenians came under Turkish rule long before the conquest of Constantinople (?stanbul) on 29 May 1453 by Sultan Mehmet II (1451-1481), but this subject is outside the scope of this paper.[6] Sultan Mehmet organised the Armenian community in 1461 by appointing Hovakim (Ovakim), the Armenian bishop of Bursa, to be the Patriarch of all the Armenians within the Ottoman state. Turco-Armenian relations were founded on mutual trust, respect and sympathy, which were to last for centuries. The Sultan placed the Armenians under his personal protection; recognised their religion, rights and liberties, and converted them into a most trustworthy and loyal element in the Ottoman state; so much that, in time they became known as the tebaa-i- sad Catholicos with the Order of St. Anne, first class, for his espionage services to the Russians.[11]

In many ways the enmity which developed between the Armenians and the Muslims had, at its root, Russian expansionism into the Caucasus. After the Russian invasion of Muslim territories the Armenians were encouraged to move into Russian held territory.[12] Armenians also migrated to the Khanate of Karabakh after its occupation by the Russians.[13]

The earliest Armenian aspirations for autonomy, or independence, were inspired by the French Revolution (1789).[14] The Armenians were also influenced by the Greek rebellion of 1821, which taught them the lesson that, for a minority to realise its ambition for independence the intervention of foreign powers was indispensable.[15] Yet, in Anatolia the Armenians did not have the advantages which the Greeks and other Balkan peoples had. They were scattered throughout Ottoman territories, intermingled with Turks and other Muslims; nowhere did they constitute a majority of the population; they were divided into hostile sects (Gregorian, Catholic and Protestant); they were disorganised; and worst of all, they allowed themselves to be manipulated by the major Powers, particularly by Tsarist Russia, who vied with one another to despoil the Ottoman state. These Powers considered the Armenians merely as pawns in their designs for self-aggrandisement. However, the Armenian militants were determined to get their own way at whatever cost.[16]

RUSSO-ARMENIAN COLLABORATION

The long struggle between Turks, other Muslims, and Armenians, began in earnest during the Russo-Ottoman wars of 1827-29, when the Armenians felt that their opportunity had arrived. In these wars the Armenian subjects of the Persian and Ottoman states, as well as Armenians living in the Russian Empire, fought on the side of the Russians against Persia and the Ottoman state. In such wars, according to Justin McCarthy, the pattern was always the same: Russian invasion of Muslim territory, Armenians siding with the invaders, huge Muslim mortality and migration, and de facto population exchanges of Muslims and Armenians. That is how an Armenian majority was established in what today is the Republic of Armenia, a majority created by the Russians. Erivan was, until 1827, a Persian province with a Muslim (mainly Turkish) majority. The destruction, or forced migration of the Muslim population enabled the Russians to repopulate the region with Armenians from the Persian and Ottoman states.[17]

In the ensuing Turco-Russian confrontations, e.g. the Crimean War (1853-56), the situation was the same: many Ottoman Armenians helping Russia, but some of them remaining loyal to the Ottoman state.[18] Despite Armenian collaboration with, and the assistance given by the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin to the Russian governments, the latter always let them down, because the Russians did not want an ‘Armenian question’ on their territories.[19] Yet, many Armenians persisted in their loyalty to Russia, and their Catholicos at Etchmiadzin did not hesitate to use his influence, even on Ottoman Armenians, in favour of the Russians.[20]

The period following the Russo-Ottoman war of 1828 ushered in a reform movement in the Ottoman state, known as the Tanzimat (Regulation or Organisation), which was inaugurated by an edict under the title of Gülhane Hatt-? ?erifi (Noble Edict of the Rose Chamber), dated 3 November 1839.[21] This edict was confirmed and reinforced by the Islahat Hatt-? Hümayunu or Islahat Ferman? (Imperial Edict of Reforms), of 18 February 1856. Both edicts aimed at expanding the reforms, which had already begun in the military sphere to other fields as well, and to secure equality and guarantees of life, liberty and estate to the Christian population of the Ottoman state.[22]

As a result of this reform movement the Armenian community was given a constitution that was sanctioned by the Sultan Abdülaziz (1830-76), on 17 March 1863. It was "a remarkable document, institutionalising a high degree of autonomy", according to Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis.[23] It inaugurated a golden age for the Armenian community, some of whose militant leaders began to abuse their new privileges and strove for the establishment of an imperium in imperio. The Russians, who were not happy with the reforms, as they believed these would spread to their own Armenian subjects, used the Armenian constitution as a pretext to intensify their interference in Ottoman Armenian affairs.[24]

This was the period when the Ottoman state bestowed many rights, privileges and opportunities on urban Armenians, almost in all walks of life. They could ascend to the highest administrative offices of the state. A number of them became civil servants, governors, general inspectors, and even viziers. From 1850 to 1876 every Grand Vizier (Sadrazam - Prime Minister), and Foreign Minister had an Armenian adviser. In 1868, for the first time in Ottoman history, an Armenian named Krikor Agaton was appointed to the post of Minister of Public Works.[25] There were also two Armenian generals in the Ottoman army in 1862, employed in the War Office and the Admiralty.[26] A number of Armenians became Pashas,[27] the highest dignity in the state.[28]

Those Armenians living in rural areas near towns also benefited from these reforms, but others inhabiting villages in remote areas shared the fate of their Muslim neighbours, who were sometimes subjected to the lawlessness and depredations of nomadic tribes, mainly of the Kurds. The more remote and inaccessible a rural settlement, the more the opportunity arose for brigands to make life a misery for the sedentary people, depending also on the weakness of the government in power. In addition to the scourge of some of the nomadic tribes, the proselytising carried on among the Gregorian Armenians by missionaries[29] contributed to much unrest in the country. First the Catholic missionaries, then the Protestants had begun a campaign of indoctrination among the Gregorians, which created many problems.[30] In the words of an Armenian writer, the introduction of Catholicism and Protestantism among the Armenians "had more ruinous effect on the nation than anything else ever had".[31] The Armenian community was thus divided by these agents of the major Powers into three hostile sects the members of whom were constantly at each other's throats, which needed Turkish intervention in order to prevent them from exterminating one another.[32]

The Catholics in Turkey were protected by France and Austria, the Protestants mainly by Britain and USA, and the Orthodox by Russia. All these Powers aimed at increasing their influence in the Ottoman state, ostensibly in order to protect their protégés, but actually in order to promote their own interests. The Armenians were thus divided by the agents of the major Powers for their own ulterior motives. Russia was using the Gregorian Armenians in order to descend to the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea and cut off the British route to India;[33] Britain was using the Protestant and Gregorian Armenians to preserve its ‘lifeline’ to India by containing Russia and restricting French influence; and France was making use of the Catholic Armenians for its own interests in the Near East.

Consciously or not, the major Powers were directly or indirectly encouraging enmity between the different Armenian sects. They were also using the Armenians in order to intervene in the internal affairs of the Ottoman state by pretending that they were interested in the problems of Christian minorities, but in fact, they were jockeying with one another for influence in, or for a portion of that state when the ‘Sick man of Europe’ demised. Their frequent interventions contributed greatly to the upsurge of Armenian militancy, and to the inception, intensification and proliferation of Armenian insurrection and terrorism which, in time, became the root-cause of what came to be known as the ‘Armenian question’.[34]

THE TURCO-RUSSIAN WAR AND THE ARMENIANS

Towards the latter part of the nineteenth century the decline of the Ottoman state became acute. Russia, taking advantage of this decline, and in order to hasten the demise of the Ottoman state, encouraged the growing nationalist movements in that state, particularly in the Balkans. As a result there were rebellions in Herzegovina and Bulgaria in the 1870s. This led to the Turco-Russian war, which broke out on 24 April 1877. In June the Russian armies, commanded mainly by Russian Armenian generals, occupied Erzurum in eastern Anatolia, and some Armenians joined the invaders, acting as guides, while many others collaborated with the invading Russian armies.[35] In some remote parts of Anatolia Armenian armed bands took advantage of the absence of all able-bodied Turkish men and troops to attack unprotected peaceful Muslim villages.

The presence of the Russians in the region encouraged the Armenian collaborators to maltreat their Muslim neighbours; whilst the advance of the Russian armies across the Balkans created among the Armenian intellectuals and clergy in Istanbul, a belief in Russian ascendance to power and the ultimate doom of the Ottoman state. They began to calculate the speedy fall of Ottoman 'domination' and to turn their eyes towards its would be successor.[36]

The initial eagerness of some Ottoman Armenians to assist the Ottoman government in the war was reversed after the capitulation of the Ottoman army under General Osman Pasha at Plevna, and following the efforts of Armenian Russophiles to induce their co-religionists to support Russia.[37] The Armenians then decided to address a petition to the Tsar, requesting his help for the realisation of their aspirations.[38] The Armenian Patriarch visited the Russian Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, at San Stefano (Ye?ilköy), and later sent him a delegation under Migirditch Khrimian, a former bishop of Van, with a letter requesting the establishment of an independent Armenian state in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman state, or their domination by Russia. The Armenian delegation was well received by the Grand Duke, but evidently did not succeed in its mission. The Russians were happier with discontented Armenians in the Ottoman state than with an independent state which might soon encourage their own Armenians to make similar demands.[39]

THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN

Following the defeat of the Ottoman state by Russia, a peace congress was held in Berlin. The Armenian leaders submitted a règlement organique to the Congress, which met from 13 June to 13 July 1878,[40] asking for the establishment of an ‘Armenian province’, comprising all the territory between the Russian and Persian frontiers and the Black Sea where the Armenians were a minority.[41] They warned that if the Congress refused to listen to their demands, they were resolved to agitate until they obtained what they wanted, and if they could not succeed without foreign aid, they would place themselves completely in the hands of Russia, and even prefer annexation by that state.[42] They also sent delegations to St. Petersburg, Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, and ultimately to Berlin, to follow the Congress. However, at the Berlin Congress they did not obtain what they asked for; nevertheless Britain prevailed upon the Congress to include an article in the Treaty of Berlin, Article 61, by which the Ottoman government undertook to carry out reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against ‘Circassians and Kurds’. The Ottoman government also undertook to make known periodically the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who would superintend their application. Thus, Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin placed the Armenian reforms under the guarantee of the signatory Powers, who thereby explicitly procured the right to interfere in the internal affairs of the Ottoman state.[43]

The Armenian delegation was not pleased with this outcome and on 13 July 1878 they lodged a formal protest against Article 61, claiming that they had been deceived, and that the Armenian people would never cease "from crying out until Europe gave their legitimate demands satisfaction".[44] According to Turkish historians, the last part of the Armenian protest was as follows: "The Armenian delegation will return to the East, carrying with it the lesson that, without struggle and insurrection, nothing can be achieved".[45] With great difficulty did the British Ambassador in Istanbul, at the time, Sir Austen Henry Layard persuaded some of the Armenian leaders that the Cyprus Convention, which was signed between England and the Ottoman state on 4 June 1878, whereby Britain was allowed to occupy and administer the island of Cyprus in return for defending the Anatolian territories of the Ottoman state against Russia, would be beneficial to the Armenians, as it gave Britain the right to ask the Ottoman government to carry out reforms in Anatolia.[46]

Neither Armenian Patriarch Nerses, nor the other Armenian leaders could realise however, that the British government was much less concerned with the Armenians than with the country they inhabited, which served as a buffer-zone between Russia and the route to India, through the Mediterranean. The main reason why British Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury was instrumental in the insertion of Article 61 in the Treaty of Berlin was to deprive Russia of the modus vivendi of Balkanising the eastern provinces of the Ottoman state for its own ulterior motives.[47]

GENESIS AND PROLIFERATION OF ARMENIAN MILITANT ORGANISATIONS

Following the signing of the Treaty of Berlin various attempts were made by the major Powers, particularly by the British Conservative and Liberal governments, for the introduction of reforms in the Ottoman state for the benefit of the Christians, especially of the Armenians,[48] but without success. The Ottoman government was in no position to fulfil its promise because the reforms demanded, and would entail the expenditure of vast sums of money, and other resources, which an Ottoman state bankrupted by those very Powers could not afford. That state was bleeding to death because of the Capitulations (extra-territorial and supra-national privileges granted to the Powers), the protégé system, and the public debt; nor would the Powers lend it any money. Therefore, the danger of intervention threatened the very existence of the Ottoman state.

This very danger encouraged the Armenian militants to intensify their intrigues with Russia,[49] and to prepare for revolt in order to procure an autonomous Armenian province in eastern Anatolia, where the Armenians were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the Muslims.[50] This was confirmed by the French Vice-Consul in Erzurum, who reported that Russian intrigues were actively at work to foment a rising among the Armenians. The Russians were continuing to make use of a number of "local Armenian characters to spy and agitate for them".[51]

Following the financial collapse of the Ottoman state in the early 1880s the relations between the Turks and the Armenians began to deteriorate. According to the British Consul in Erzurum, Major William Everett, as early as 1882 there were strong indications that some Armenian militants in eastern Anatolia were making preparations for insurrection.[52] By June the insurrectionary movement among the Armenians was intensifying. Consul Everett believed that this movement emanated from Russian Armenia, and was secretly encouraged by Russia. There were many Russian agents perpetually travelling throughout the country and provoking the Armenians to rebellion.[53]

In view of these developments, the Ottoman government became very suspicious of the Armenians, and looked upon their leaders as dangerous elements. The lot of the Armenians naturally became much harder. They, in turn, intensified their activities and established various committees all over the world, particularly in the European capitals, with branches in Ottoman territories.[54] The Hintchak (Bell) Committee was set up by Avedis Nazarbek (Nazarbekian or Nazarbekiantz) in Geneva in 1887, based on Marxist-Socialist principles.[55] This was followed by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Dashnaktsutiun (Hai Heghapokhakan Dashnaktsutiun), which was established in the summer of 1890 in Tbilisi, on national socialist principles, by Kristapor Mikaelian, Stepan Zorian and Simon Zavarian, all educated in Russian universities.[56] The aim of both organisations was the establishment of the independence of ‘Turkish Armenia’ (eastern provinces) and ultimately its transformation into a national socialist state. They would procure this by creating the pretext for the major Powers to intervene and set up an Armenian state for them. This pretext would be supplied by Armenian rebels, or terrorists, by provoking the Muslims in most unimaginable and satanic ways so that they would retaliate and enable the Armenians to cry out that "the barbarous Muslim Turks are massacring the innocent Christian Armenians".[57]

Louise Nalbandian, an Armenian writer, asserts that the programme of the Hintchak party was directed towards "provocation and terrorism" in order to incite the feelings of the people against their enemies and derive benefits from their retaliation. "Agitation and terror were needed to elevate the spirit of the people", she declares. Armenian terrorists began to exterminate what they considered as "the most dangerous" of the Armenian, Turkish and other elements, inimical to their cause, and did not hesitate to murder their opponents and wealthy Armenians who did not contribute to their funds. To assist them in carrying out all of these terroristic acts, they organised an exclusive branch specifically devoted to performing acts of terrorism, reveals Nalbandian.[58]

Thus, with the establishment of the Hintchak society the destiny of the Ottoman Armenians passed into the hands of a few Russian Armenian anarchists which, in the words of Leo, an Armenian writer, constituted a turning point in their history, for the Armenian community was about to be made an instrument in a bloody contest that would span over many years.[59] In this contest not only terror, but disinformation, and a campaign of lies and vituperations, were the main instruments used by the Armenian militants, who managed, through their repeated clamours, to convince the Christian West that they were being persecuted by the Muslim Turks because of their Christian religion.

While Armenian militancy was spreading, some wiser counsels among the Armenian community were not lacking. In August 1889 the Armenian Vicar in Bitlis, Chorene Vartabed, in a conversation with British Consul Chermside, deprecated the outcry raised abroad and the exaggerated stories published. He did not consider the general condition hopeless, and referred to the time of a past generation when there was "no foreign intervention, no oceans of press pity poured out on the Armenians of Turkey", and when their forefathers still managed "to live under Turkish rule quite happily".[60]

TOWARDS CIVIL WAR IN ANATOLIA

Between 1890 and the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Armenian militants, both the Hintchakists and the Dashnakists, caused many incidents in the Ottoman state, which amounted to a civil war. Particularly following the establishment of the Dashnaktsutiun, Armenian affairs shifted to more action: to bring about a long drawn-out fight against Ottoman ‘tyranny’, they called it, and to create in the country a continuous revolutionary state in order to procure European intervention.[61]

Soon these Armenian terror organisations ended up in the hands of a minority of foreign-inspired, self-seeking, violent opportunists, with limited ability and doubtful patriotism. Their main aim was to provoke armed rebellions all over the Ottoman state in order to ‘spill blood to obtain freedom’, which would bring fatal results to Armenian and Muslim villagers and inhabitants of cities, resulting in mutual massacres. Meanwhile Russian Armenia had become a centre for arms collection and revolutionary organisation aimed at the Ottomans.[62]

The activities of the revolutionaries were greatly facilitated by their relationship to the Armenian Church. As a body, the Church crossed the Ottoman-Russian border. Using the facilities of the Church, the clerics easily kept up communication between the revolutionaries in southern Caucasus and Anatolia, and between the Russian government and the revolutionaries. The presence in the Armenian revolutionary movement of priests and bishops[63] brought together the two faces of Armenian identity: Church and ultra- nationalism. Church officials also gave practical assistance to the revolutionaries.[64]

In eastern Anatolia almost a reign of terror was brought about as a result of the reckless behaviour of a handful of Armenian agitators and assassins.[65] These extremists were even quarrelling among themselves and killing one another, usually the more violent ones murdering, or eliminating the more passive Armenian leaders who were not in favour of violence. Naturally the Turks began to react to this agitation. Every Turk had a frantic terror of secret societies and plots, because most of them remembered the part played by Greek and Bulgarian committees, and the disastrous intervention of Russia in 1877, and of other Powers. To them it now appeared that the loyal Armenian nation no longer deserved that title; the Armenians were as seditious as the Greeks and the Bulgarians; they had secret committees and revolutionary printing presses; they were arming and conspiring to massacre the ‘good Muslims’. The Armenian militants had definitely planned a great conflagration.[66] Their terrible deeds: bombs in public places, murders of officials, mutilation of the bodies of their victims, the use of youngsters to kill their opponents, arson, sabotage, robberies, etc., can be traced from British documents preserved at the Public Record Office.[67] They even attacked foreign representatives in order to put the blame on the Turks and to attract the public opinion of Europe to their side. French Consul Carlier in Sivas, who had opened the Consulate to Armenian refugees, was shot by an Armenian youth, who, when challenged, declared that he wanted to kill the Consul so that this would have great repercussions in Europe, where they would believe that he was assassinated by Turks.[68]

The Reverend Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, founder and first president of Robert College (now Bo?aziçi University) in Istanbul, who lived in Turkey and knew the Turks and the Armenians very well, in a letter described in great detail the methods used by Armenian militants in order to cause havoc in the Ottoman state. Hamlin was told by an Armenian intellectual that they were preparing the ground in Anatolia for the Russians to take over. He declared that the Hintchakist bands, organised all over the country, would watch their opportunities to kill the Muslims, set fire to their villages, and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Muslims would then rise and fall upon the defenceless Armenians, and slaughter them with such barbarities that Russia would enter, "in the name of humanity and Christian civilisation", and take possession. Hamlin described the Armenian militants as "cunning, unprincipled and cruel... they are of Russian origin, Russian gold and craft govern them".[69]

The motto of the Armenian revolutionaries, according to A.J.Arnold, the secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, was as follows: "There will be many things wanted for the deliverance of our mother country. We will want time and money, and will want blood... To accomplish our work many will have to endanger their lives, be persecuted and fall victims, whether it be those who wield the sword or work with the pen".[70] The Armenian terrorists were so ruthless that in April 1894, according to a report which the French Ambassador in Istanbul, Paul Cambon, sent to Casimir Perrier of the French Foreign Office, they even tried to assassinate their own Patriarch, Ashikian. The eighteen-year old Armenian assassin tried to shoot the Patriarch but failed because the weapon was out of order.[71]

By the middle of 1894 the eastern provinces of the Ottoman state were in a turmoil as a result of the Armenian insurrectionary movement. Incidents erupted all over the country, some very serious, involving the death of many innocent people on both sides, and the destruction of much property. At last the Armenian militant leaders had got what they wanted: Muslim reprisals and the pretext for the major Powers to intervene. There were incidents at Sasun, Istanbul, Trabzon, and in many other places of the country where practically a civil war was raging between the deluded Armenians and the Turks. The incidents, particularly the Sasun revolt, provoked by the Armenian militants in the summer of 1894, were echoed to the West by them and their supporters, as ‘Armenian massacres’. However, a number of impartial observers laid much blame on the Armenian militants and their patrons.

A British Member of Parliament, Sir Ellis Ashmeed Bartlett, in a pamphlet he published in February 1895, which he circulated to the British Parliament, observed that "most of the tales so widely circulated" in connection with the Turco-Armenian incidents were manufactured and directed by "the most imaginative and malevolent spirit". The "deliberate object" of the agitation "was not to obtain redress for the Armenian sufferings, but to excite public feeling in this country (UK) against Turkey and the Turks". He was supported in his views by M. Ximenes, a Spanish geographer and man of science, an eye witness to the Sasun rebellion, who contradicted the Armenian ‘massacre’ allegations.[72] Another British source, Captain Charles Boswell Norman, who was sent to the Ottoman state as an officer in the Royal Artillery, observed in a manuscript of 1895,[73] "only the Armenian version of the disturbances, embellished with hysterical utterances of their English collaborators" were heard of, whereas in reality "the disturbances in Asia Minor are the direct outcome of a widespread anarchist movement". He insisted that the Hintchakist committee was directly responsible for all the bloodshed in Anatolia. British journalists were duped by the Armenians.[74] Many of the Armenian falsehoods were also revealed during the sessions of the Sasun Inquiry Commission, which the Ottoman government established in December 1894, consisting of British, French and Russian representatives, in addition to Muslim ones.[75]

As for the toll among both Armenians and Muslims, in numerous incidents that took place between 1894 and 1896, no reliable statistics are available. Most Armenian sources claim that 400,000 Armenians were killed; but they do not mention the number of Muslims exterminated by the Armenians.[76] The figure is estimated to be between 10,000 and 20,000 Armenians killed, which is a far cry from 400,000 Armenians ‘massacred’. It is also estimated that between 5,000 and 10,000 Muslims were killed, most of whom were innocent people who became victims of Armenian extremism,[77] but this is rarely mentioned in the annals of European history.

After these tragic incidents many attempts were made both by the Ottoman government and some of the moderate Armenian leaders to reconcile the Muslims and the Armenians. From 1896 to 1908, although Armenian incidents flared up intermittently with every major crisis, such as the Ottoman-Greek war of 1897, the German Emperor's visit to Istanbul in 1898, the eruption of the Cretan and Macedonian questions, and the attempt by Armenian militants to assassinate Sultan Abdülhamit II (1842-1918), nevertheless these simmered on until the rapprochement between the Armenian revolutionaries and the Young Turks, who co-operated together, and with other malcontents of the state, in bringing about the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908.

THE YOUNG TURK REVOLUTION AND ITS AFTERMATH

As a result of the Young Turk revolution, Turks and Armenians, dazzled for the time being by the slogans of the revolution such as ‘liberty, fraternity and equality’, began to show signs of rapprochement. In August 1908 M. Sabahgoulian, a Caucasian Armenian and president of the Hintchak Society, declared at the Sourp Yervartioun Church of Beyoglu (Pera) that the Hintchakists would terminate their revolutionary activities and do their utmost "for the development and prosperity of our country". At the same time E. Aknouni (Maloumian), another Russian Armenian and spokesman of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Dashnaktsutiun, announced that the Dashnaktzagans would protect, or defend the new Ottoman constitutional regime, work for the unification of the Ottoman nationalities, and co-operate with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP of the Young Turks).[78]

At first the relations, particularly between the Young Turks and the Dashnakists, were cordial. But soon after dissensions began to arise between them, when the Dashnakists became insolent, so much that, British Vice-Consul Captain Dickson wrote to his Ambassador in Istanbul, Sir Gerard Lowther, as follows: "The Armenian in subjection, such as I have seen him, is an unsympathetic, mean, cringing, unscrupulous, lying, thieving curd; given his freedom, he loses none of these bad qualities, but in addition becomes insolent, domineering, despotic."[79] The Vice-Consul believed that the Armenian policy was, had been, and probably would always be, "an entirely selfish one, with no thoughts of an united Ottoman Empire, but only of their own nationality, if not of their own profit".[80] He believed that Russia was preparing to destabilise the eastern provinces of the Ottoman state, and indicated how a handful of Armenian revolutionary leaders were ready to help Russia put its plans into execution. Even Ambassador Lowther confirmed that the attitude of the Armenians since the re-establishment of the constitution had been "arrogant and provocative, while the Turks are sullen, subdued and suspicious".[81]

The Dashnakists had co-operated with the Young Turks with the hope that, in return, they would obtain some measure of decentralisation that would go far enough to establish one or two ‘purely Armenian provinces’, but as the regenerated Ottoman government was aiming at the establishment of a united Ottoman nationality without distinction of religion or race, their disappointment was great. Even Vice-Consul Dickson believed that the aims of the Dashnak Society were "preposterously ambitious", and that they hoped for the establishment of an Armenian republic, formed out of the portions of the Ottoman, Russian and Persian provinces, from which the non-Armenian elements would gradually be excluded. Dickson informed Lowther that the Armenian clergy were exhorting their flocks to marry young, and to beget large families so as to swamp the other elements.[82]

Thus, the Turco-Armenian rapprochement proved to be short-lived.[83] Despite the sensible counsels of the Armenian Patriarch Matheos Ismirlian, directed to his community, to co-operate loyally with the Turks by showing prudence and moderation, and by abstaining from all extremist ideas, as he said, the Turkish government and people were "frankly and honestly disposed to treat the Armenians fairly",[84] his advice fell on deaf ears.[85]

THE ADANA INCIDENTS

On the night of 12/13 April 1909 there was a counter-revolution in Istanbul, and a new government under Tevfik Pasha was established on 14 April. Gabriel Noradounghian, an Armenian, was appointed Minister of Commerce and Public Works. However, it did not last long, and Istanbul was occupied by an army dispatched from Salonica. Abdülhamit was forced to resign. During these developments incidents took place in Adana.

According to British writer Telford Waugh, the Armenians had shown themselves to be arrogant and boastful over their new equality.[86] Any Armenian who could write began to publish odes, poetry, stories, etc., which had little to do with the facts. They staged revolutionary plays and recited national songs inciting the Turks. The Armenian intelligentsia tried their best to provoke the Armenian people to revolt. The more the Armenians talked and recited poetry, and the more they armed themselves, the more they aroused the anxiety and sense of alarm of the Muslim people. The Dashnak and Hintchak societies, too, did much to stir them.[87]

The Turks were also alarmed by the exhortations of the Armenians to arm themselves, delivered by Mousheg, the Gregorian bishop of Adana, throughout the country, particularly in Adana and its region where the bishop, according to British Ambassador Lowther, had a commercial interest in the sale of fire-arms.[88] Lowther believed that the Armenian bishop was largely responsible for inflaming the passions of the Armenian people and the fears of the Turks. The British Vice-Consul in Mersin, Major Doughty Wylie, recognised this to such an extent that, in the interests of public order, he later prevented the bishop's landing in Mersin on his return to his diocese.[89]

On 13 and 14 April reports were already spreading through the provinces of the startling events which were then occurring in the capital. On the night of the 14th incidents erupted in Adana.[90] During the whole of the 15th, 16th and 17th April Adana became the scene of wide disorder; Turks and Armenians clashed all over the place. However, owing to the intervention of Doughty Wylie, these incidents were brought to an end soon after. Moreover, the arrival on or about the 25th April of several British and other foreign warships in Mersin and Iskenderun (Alexandretta), including French and Russian vessels, also did much towards restoring the confidence of the people.

By 25 April the ferocity of the incidents began to abate. Ambassador Lowther could give no definite figures of the dead and wounded, but in Adana 2,000 bodies were buried of whom 600 were stated to be Muslims. The Ottoman government subsequently issued an official estimate of 5,400 casualties for the whole district; but Lowther believed that the figure was probably somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 Armenians.[91] He did not bother to give the number of Muslim casualties. Cemal Pasha states that 17,000 Armenians and 1,850 Muslims were killed.[92]

Who was responsible for the Adana incidents? Lowther did not believe that there was any ground to assume that the Armenians were planning an insurrection, or that the Muslims had been preparing a carefully premeditated ‘massacre’. The causes of the incidents were, according to him, rather to be found in the vainglorious talk of equality on the part of the young Armenians, who were all ‘in theory’ revolutionaries and advocates of home rule; in the fear which their attitude had inspired among the Muslims of some definite act of aggression, a fear which was somewhat justified by the constant stream of arms that flowed into the country for the use of the non-Muslim population; in the extravagance of the orators on both sides; and in the weakness of government authority. In a later dispatch Lowther admitted that Bishop Mousheg had great responsibility in the outburst of the incidents.[93] Yet, R. McDowell of the British Foreign Office, in commenting on these incidents later, observed that the Adana incidents "were undoubtedly the result of (revolutionary) society propaganda, and of urging the Armenians to armed resistance".[94]

A NEW REFORM SCHEME

After the Adana incidents, in which many Turks and Armenians lost their lives, and which were, as usual, echoed to the West as ‘the massacre of Armenians’, Turco-Armenian relations again became very strained. During the Balkan wars which began in October 1912, extensive disorders took place all over Anatolia. The political and international situation, and reports from the European provinces of the Ottoman state about the ill-treatment of the Muslims there, added to other reports that the Armenians in the Balkans had formed committees to fight against the Turks, increased the animosity towards them in the outlying provinces of the country.[95]

Armenian militant leaders, encouraged by the Ottoman defeats in the Balkan wars, judged the time ripe for action again. When, as in the past, Armenian leaders appealed to Russia for active support against the Ottoman government, in Turkish eyes the Armenians became the instruments of Russian policy.[96] As a result of Armenian agitation and intrigues with Russia the situation in Anatolia became so acute that, in April 1913, it was prophesied at the British Foreign Office that the break-up of the Ottoman state, in Asia as well as in Europe, appeared to be imminent.[97]

This situation compelled the Ottoman government to instruct its Ambassador in London, Tevfik Pasha, to submit a plan for reform in its Asiatic provinces under British officials. This appeal sparked off a long controversy among the Powers, as Russia opposed it very strongly. All through the summer of 1913 talks were held among the ambassadors of the Powers in Istanbul about the prospective reforms in Anatolia. In these pourparlers Russia, assisted by Britain and France (the Triple Entente), posed as the champions of the Armenians, to whom they systematically gave false hopes in order to use them to advance their own interests,[98] whilst Germany and Austria (two members of the Triple Alliance), took the side of the Ottoman government.

The result was the imposition on Turkey, on 8 February 1914, of an amended Russian scheme. The CUP government was forced by Germany to accept this scheme, which amounted to the partition of the country. The reform scheme for Anatolia, though much less comprehensive than the original Russian draft, granted considerable autonomy to the six provinces of eastern Anatolia, along with the province of Trabzon, which were to be consolidated into two administrative sectors. Each sector would be administered by an European inspector-general with wide powers. The inspectors would be appointed by the Sultan for a fixed term, but could only be removed with the consent of the Powers.

The arrival in May 1914 of the two inspectors-general, Major Hoff, a Norwegian, and M. Westenek, a Dutchman, seemed to be an indication that Armenian dreams were about to be fulfilled, and the Ottoman state parcelled out. The "Armenian reform scheme" was nothing but an excuse for the major Powers to divide the Ottoman state into spheres of economic exploitation. The Ottoman government, however, which dreaded the Russian menace behind the scheme, tried to curtail the authority of the inspectors, and as soon as the Great War broke out, dismissed them.[99]

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE ARMENIANS

Long before the outbreak of the First World War the Ottoman state had lost many of its territories. On 5 October 1908 Austria had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria had proclaimed its independence. Italy had seized Tripoli in 1911 and had occupied the Dodecanese Islands. The Balkan wars (1912-13) had almost completed the destruction of the Ottoman state in Europe. Since 1908 the Ottomans had lost 83 percent of the territory and 69 percent of the population of their European provinces, most of whom were Muslims, who were exterminated or expelled. By 1913 the Ottoman state was already being parcelled out among the major Powers for economic exploitation. Those involved were Russia, France, Britain, Italy, Germany and Austria. The state was practically forced to sign a number of bilateral agreements, and the Powers then arranged among themselves to recognise each other's areas of influence in order to avoid a scramble.[100] The Entente Powers also later signed a number of secret agreements among themselves, dividing the war spoils.[101] However, this was one of the worst scrambles in history, which was facilitated by Armenian militancy and revolutionary activity.

Between May and July 1914 the Ottoman government made an alliance proposal to Russia, and a bid for closer relations with France, only to be rebuffed in both cases.[102] Britain, too, was not willing to accommodate the Young Turk government. When, on 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia, the Ottoman government began to mobilise on the following day, after German Ambassador Liman von Wangenheim and the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sait Halim Pasha had signed a treaty of alliance between their countries.[103] The Ottoman government was left with no option but to approach Germany.

Meanwhile the Armenian militants, taking advantage of the precarious position of the Ottoman state, did not hesitate to offer their services to Russia and its allies, despite the fact that the Ottoman government promised autonomy to the Armenians if they remained neutral or supported their state. The Armenians’ secret plan was that they would preserve their loyalty in peacetime, but would carry on with their preparation and with arming themselves with weapons brought in from Russia and obtained locally. If war was declared, Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman armies would join the Russian armies with their weapons. If the Ottoman army advanced, the Armenians would remain calm and loyal. If it retreated, or came to a standstill, the Armenians would form armed guerrilla bands and begin programmed operations behind the Ottoman lines.[104]

After the Ottoman state entered the war in November 1914, and long before that event, Armenian officials in the Ottoman service had begun to pass information to the Entente Powers.[105] They also began sabotage activities,[106] and provoked numerous rebellions all over the country.[107] On the other hand, the Armenians in the Russian Empire joined the Russian forces with the intention of occupying the eastern provinces of Anatolia.[108] They pledged loyalty to Tsar Nicholas II, who promised ‘to free’ the Ottoman Armenians. Soon after, Alexander Khatissian, the president of the Armenian National Bureau of Tbilisi, in an appeal to the Tsar declared: "From all the countries the Armenians are hurrying to enter the ranks of the glorious Russian Army, in order, with their blood, to serve for the victory of the Russian arms... Let the Russian flag fly freely over the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus... Let the Armenian people of Turkey, who have suffered for the faith of Christ, receive resurrection for a new life under the protection of Russia".[109] The Armenians thus became, in the words of David Lloyd George, ‘the little allies’ of the Entente Powers.[110]

Soon the Ottoman government realised that the Armenians were plotting a rebellion. Many Armenians were deserting from the Ottoman army and committing atrocities. Meanwhile the Russian army began to advance in the eastern provinces in order to give support to Armenian insurgents. Those insurgents had plundered the Muslim villages on their way and had massacred every Muslim they could lay their hands on. As the Muslim youth of those regions had already been conscripted for military service and were away at the front, only old people, women, children and the disabled had remained behind, and they fell victim to Armenian atrocities.[111]

Between November 1914 and May 1915 Armenian militants and insurgents caused many incidents all over the Ottoman state, as confirmed by Turkish and other war documents.[112] During the first year of the war the Ottomans were preoccupied with Armenian revolts in eastern Anatolia. Only the revolt in Van was successful, but all revolts caused great loss of life and significantly harmed the Ottoman war effort. The revolt in Van was very atrocious, and Turkish/Muslim people suffered heavily. Armenian atrocities and Muslim losses are well depicted by Justin McCarthy,[113] whilst there is an abundance of British documents in the Public Record Office on Armenian rebellions and atrocities.[114]

Following their success in the Van rebellion the Armenians established their own administration under Aram Manoukian. Meanwhile the Russian troops reached Van on 14 May 1915 and were deliriously welcomed by the local Armenians. An Armenian legion was constituted to expel the Turks from the entire south shore of lake Van in preparation for a concerted Russian drive into the province of Bitlis.[115] On 21 May Tsar Nicholas sent a telegram to the Armenian revolutionary committee of Van, thanking it ‘for its services to Russia’.

ARMENIAN RELOCATIONS

Thus, encouraged by Russia, the Armenians had begun to disrupt the Ottoman war effort by causing much trouble behind the Turkish lines, particularly on the eastern front. As the Russian forces began to march into Ottoman territory in eastern Anatolia, they were led by advanced units composed of volunteer Ottoman and Russian Armenians, who were joined by Armenian deserters from the Ottoman army. Many of these had also formed bands, and had armed themselves with weapons, which they had for years been storing in Armenian and missionary homes, churches and schools. They also raided Ottoman supply depots in order to increase their stock of arms and to deny them to the Ottoman army as it moved to meet this massive Russian invasion. These Armenian guerrilla forces, operating in close co-ordination with the Russians, were attacking Turkish cities, towns and villages in the east, massacring their inhabitants, while at the same time working to sabotage the Ottoman army's war effort by destroying roads and bridges, raiding convoys, and doing whatever else they could to facilitate the Russian incursion and occupation.

Under these circumstances, with the Russians advancing along a wide front in the east, with the Armenian bands spreading death and destruction while simultaneously attacking the Ottoman army units from the rear, and with the Allies invading the country along a wide front, the Ottoman government had to do something about what it considered to be ‘Armenian treachery’. The Ottoman government had reason to distrust many of the Armenians of Anatolia because of the assistance given by them to the invading Russian armies in 1828, 1854 and 1877.[116] Nevertheless, even after the Armenian revolt and atrocities in Van, the Ottoman government made one final attempt to secure the loyalty of the Armenians. Summoning to a meeting the Patriarch, some Armenian deputies and other delegates, it warned them that drastic measures would be taken unless the Armenians stopped their atrocities against the Muslims and gave up working to undermine the war-effort. But the Armenian militant leaders saw in this warning the weakness of the Ottoman government, and intensified their activities to fulfil their aspirations.[117]

Thereupon, the possibility of widespread rebellion behind Ottoman lines, and of the danger of the Ottoman army having to fight on a number of fronts, with its lines of communication threatened, compelled the Ottoman government, on 24 April 1915, to decide to remove the Armenians from vulnerable strategic points where they could assist the enemy. This decision did not precede, but was the result of Armenian rebellions which threatened the very existence of the Ottoman state by bringing about its total defeat at the hands of its enemies, let alone the fact that the unarmed remnants of the Turkish population (including children, women and old men) were subjected to many Armenian atrocities.[118]

The Ottoman Council of Ministers issued strict instructions on the mode of evacuation of the Armenians. Secret Turkish documents captured in Palestine by the British army in the autumn of 1918 reveal the decision of the Turkish government to close down the militant Armenian organisations and to arrest their militant leaders, warning the officials that, as this order was exclusively a measure against the extension of the Armenian committees, they should ‘abstain from putting it into a form which might result in mutual massacre of Muslim and Armenian elements’. At the British Foreign Office this document was minuted on 16 January 1920 by W.S.Edmonds as follows: "There is not enough evidence here to bring home the charge of massacre any closer"; whilst D.G.Osborne added the following: "On the contrary, the last paragraph of the order of the Minister of the Interior specifically warns against measures likely to lead to massacre".[119]

The above-mentioned instructions were circulated by Mehmet Talat, then Minister of the Interior, whilst warnings were sent to Ottoman military commanders to ensure that neither the Kurds nor other Muslims used the situation to take vengeance for the long years of Armenian atrocities. The Armenians were to be protected and cared for until they returned to their homes after the war.[120] These secret instructions were removed from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul during the Allied occupation at the end of the war, most probably by some Greek or Armenian agents working for the British Military Intelligence Service. They were the original instructions issued by Mehmet Talat in connection with the evacuation of the Armenians.[121] Nowhere are there any instructions for the ‘massacre or genocide’ of the Armenians.

It has been estimated that about 700,000 Armenians were relocated until early 1917. Of these, between 300,000 and 400,000 lost their lives as a result of large-scale military and guerrilla activities then going on in the areas through which they passed, as well as the general insecurity, brigandage and blood-feuds which some Muslim tribes, mainly the Kurds, sought to carry out as the convoys passed through their territories.[122] In addition, the relocations and resettlements of the Armenians took place at a time when the Ottoman state was suffering acute shortages of food, fuel, medicine, and other supplies, as well as from large-scale plague and famine. A number of Armenians also died because of disease, climatic conditions, difficulties of travel, or illegal actions by some officials. Some of them lost their lives as a result of the rebellions of many Armenians, during fights in revolts, etc. But almost two million Turks and other Muslims also lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of Armenian action, and many more died by the same war conditions.[123] Nevertheless the Ottoman government has been accused by the Armenians and their supporters of having perpetrated ‘massacres’, ‘genocide’ and even ‘holocaust’ against its Armenian minority. These accusation will be addressed below.

WARTIME DISINFORMATION

According to Harold D. Laswell, propaganda (disinformation), during the First World War, like in any other war, aimed at the following: to improve the friendly relations among the Allies; to establish amicable relations with neutral states, and to inculcate in them the idea that the Allies were not only right in their cause, but also that they would be victorious, and thus procure their support; to demolish the morale of the enemy states, and to create a dissension among, and hatred against them.[124] Obviously the state indulging in propaganda would find it advantageous to attain its goals by depicting its enemy as an ‘inhuman creature’. These vital considerations were kept in mind by the Allies, who posed as the champions of liberation and independence of subject peoples, based on Woodrow Wilson's principles of self-determination, which they never cherished.[125] When the Armenian relocations began, an excellent opportunity arose for the Entente Powers to use the resulting incidents for disinformation purposes against the Ottoman state.

This disinformation of the Entente Powers was enshrined in three books: the first one edited by Lord James Bryce, and written by Arnold Toynbee, was entitled Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (Blue Book, London 1916); the second book was written by Henry Morgenthau, et. al., under the title Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York, 1918); and the third book was written by Johannes Lepsius and was entitled Le Rapport Secret du Dr. Johannes Lepsius sur les Massacres d’Armenie (Paris, 1918). All three books have been proved by impartial scholars to have been ‘masterpieces’ of disinformation.[126] Particularly the ‘Blue Book’ had a devastating effect. Its wicked influence is still extant as the book is being abused by Armenian activists in perpetuating their hatred towards the Turks, and by certain naive scholars. Its success lay in the fact that it was based on ‘atrocity’ stories. British propaganda was geared towards such stories, real, exaggerated, or even fabricated;[127] because propagandists could flag them to journalists and correspondents, who would then flash them under banner headlines in their journals.[128]

Ambassador Morgenthau's book, which was written with the aid of his Armenian secretaries and Burton J. Hendrick, American historian and biographer, has been vehemently criticised by American scholar Heath Lowry. According to Lowry, Henry Morgenthau, who arrived in Turkey on 27 November 1913 and returned to the USA on 1 February 1916, after serving for a period of 26 months as US Ambassador, had his book compiled two years later, with the help of his two loyal Armenian aides-his personal secretary Hagop S. Andonian and his confidant, interpreter and adviser, Arshag K. Schmavonian, both of whom later found lucrative employment in the USA with the help of Morgenthau.

The book was actually drafted and written by journalist Burton H. Hendrick. It contains supposed quotations from the remarks of Ottoman Ministers, Talat and Enver Pashas, whom Hendrick portrayed as thorougly ‘inhuman characters’. Lowry, who examined carefully everything written by Morgenthau, could not locate a single reference to some very important alleged conversations. Apart from outright inventions, the ‘authors’ take rumour and put them into the mouths of Turkish leaders – moreover in quotation marks. The authors, united in anti-Turkish disinformation, try to portray Ottoman Ministers as criminals, publicly boasting of their crimes. They take rumours, through Armenian interpreters, and credit them to the Turkish leaders. They feel utterly free to change, add, subtract and quote. Heath Lowry comes to the conclusion that Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story is full of "crude half-truths and outright falsehoods" which typify it "from cover to cover".[129]

This is also confirmed by George S. Schreiner, the well-known American correspondent of the Associated Press. After reading the book, Schreiner wrote to Morgenthau on 11 November 1918 as follows: "I am writing this letter under the impression that the peace of the world will not gain by such extravagant efforts of yours. Before there can be understanding among peoples each must have the right perspective of things and that perspective consists of knowing the true proportion of right and wrong..... you did not possess in Constantinople (Istanbul) that omniscience and omnipotence you have arrogated unto yourself in the book. In the interest of truth I will also affirm that you saw little of the cruelty you fasten upon the Turks. Besides, you have killed more Armenians than ever lived in the districts of the uprising... If we take it for granted that we of the West are saints, then no Turk is any good... Ultimately truth will prevail. I have placed my limited services at her command".[130]

Nevertheless the wicked influence of Morgenthau’s book has spread, as it is treated as a ‘primary’ source, reflecting the observations of a ‘bystander’. It has served to shape anti-Turkish opinions in many circles. Decades after its first appearance, it is still reprinted and quoted extensively in speech and prose, despite the hope expressed by Schreiner, in the preface to his book Craft Sinister, as follows: "It is to be hoped that the future historian will not give too much heed to the drivel one finds in the books of diplomatist-authors. I at least have found these books both remarkably unreliable on the part played by the author. It would seem that these literary productions are on a par with the "blue books" published by governments for the edification of the public and for their own amusement".[131]

Dr. Johannes Lepsius based his book on information he collected from Armenian sources, and with the help of Morgenthau. He never set foot on Anatolian soil.[132]

CONCLUSION

Armenian claims that in 1915 the Ottoman government ‘deliberately’ implemented a plan to exterminate the Armenian minority of the Ottoman state need to be meticulously examined and addressed. Some Armenian writers and Armenophiles, with no sense of proportion, claim that between 1.5 million and 2.5 million Armenians were ‘massacred’. In order to ‘prove’ that the Ottomans deliberately planned and carried out ‘genocide’ against the Ottoman Armenians they quote extensively from a book by Aram Andonian, an Armenian writer, which was published in London in 1920, under the title The Memories of Naim Bey; Official Documents Relating to the Deportations and Massacres of Armenians. These so-called ‘documents’ have been proved to be forgeries, so typical of militant Armenians’ machinations, which are reflected in many ‘documents’ forged by them and preserved in Western archives. These ‘documents’ are supposed to include secret instructions which were said to have been sent by the Ottoman Interior Minister, Mehmet Talat, in September 1915, ordering the ‘extermination’ of the Armenians. Two Turkish scholars, ?inasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca have proved, beyond any doubt that the so-called ‘Andonian documents’ are forgeries.[133]

During the trial in Berlin of the Armenian assassin Soghomon Tehlirian, who had murdered Talat Pasha in Berlin on 15 March 1921, none of the Andonian ‘documents’ was allowed to be entered into the court proceedings as evidence, hence they were not used. A 1981 publication of the Dashnakists, also admits that the Berlin court did not accept the ‘documents’ as evidence. Even the prosecutor of the case had remarked that the ‘documents’ were proved to be false.[134]

Moreover, at a time when the British government was searching the world’s archives for any ‘evidence’ to be used against the Ottoman officials whom it held for trial for allegedly being responsible for the Turco-Armenian incidents, its failure to utilise the Andonian ‘documents’, which were readily available in the English edition, strongly suggests that the British government was fully aware of the nature of these forgeries.

Militant Armenians also allege that Adolf Hitler used the treatment accorded to the Armenians as an example in ordering, on 22 August 1939, "the extermination of the-Polish-speaking race".[135] Hitler never mentioned the Armenians in his speech, as proved by American scholar Heath Lowry. According to Heath Lowry,[136] Hitler made two speeches at Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939, and the texts of his speeches were found in the files of the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces at Flanders, and were used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials.[137] Neither of the Obersalzberg speeches introduced to the tribunal as evidence contains any reference to the Armenians. A forged third ‘document’, which had been leaked to the press and had already appeared in print, was not introduced as evidence after the original minutes of the Obersalzberg meeting were found. This ‘document’ is the source of the alleged Hitler ‘statement’ on the Armenians. It was published in The Times on Saturday, 24 November 1945.

Yet, according to Lowry, the results of this falsification were far-reaching. The world has been misled for many years into thinking that the Nuremberg transcripts provided The Times reporter with his source for the quotation attributed to Hitler. Armenian spokesmen have since argued that, Adolf Hitler justified his planned annihilation of the Jews on the world’s failure to react to the alleged Ottoman ‘genocide’ of the Armenians during World War I, which is completely unfounded.[138] Nevertheless, Armenian militants and activists, in their disinformation efforts, are striving to establish a linkage between their own historical experiences and those of the Jews of Europe during World War II, by making lavish use of the Hitler ‘quotation’, and by elevating the Turco-Armenian incidents of 1915 to that of the so –called ‘Armenian Holocaust’!

Was there, in reality, ‘genocide’ against the Ottoman Armenians during the First World War? Before answering this question one needs to define the term ‘genocide’. According to Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, who coined the word himself, "genocide" means the destruction of a nation, or of an ethnic group. It is a co-ordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of the essential foundations of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.[139] Hence, the main element of the crime of ‘genocide’ is the intention to destroy.

The term appeared, for the first time, in an official document of 18 October 1945 when the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal charged the defendants with the "crime of deliberate and systematic genocide".[140] During its first session, on 14 December 1946, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution on the "Prevention and Repression of Genocide", and on 9 December 1948, approved a Convention, Article 11 of which specified that the crime of "genocide" was committed "with the intent of destroying wholly, or partly, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group".[141]

In the light of this definition, it would be unfair to apply the term ‘genocide’ to the case of the Ottoman Armenians. There is no evidence to indicate that the Ottoman government had ‘an intention’ (or deliberately planned with malice aforethought) to destroy in whole, or in part, the Armenian minority. It is interesting to note here that, on 13 July 2000, Lord Walpole, in the House of Lords, asked the British government "whether they are willing to recognise the killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire of 1915 as genocide within the definition of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; and if not, why not."[142] Baroness Scotland of Asthal replied on behalf of the government as follows: "The Government’s position on this topic is well known and was discussed in the House of Lords on 14 April 1999. The British Government condemned the massacres of 1915-16 at the time and viewed the sufferings of the Armenian people as a terrible tragedy. The current Government in no way dissents from that view. But in the absence of unequivocal evidence to show that the Ottoman administration took a specific decision to eliminate the Armenians, the British Governments have not recognised the events of 1915-16 as genocide".

Justin McCarthy relates that more than a million of Muslims of eastern Anatolia lost their lives, as at least 130,000 Caucasian Muslim refugees. In Anatolia 600,000 Armenians and 2.5 million Muslims died. "If this was genocide, it was a strange genocide indeed, one in which many more killers than victims perished", he remarks, and adds that the use of the word "genocide" to describe the actions of the Turks is "ludicrous". What passed between the Armenians and the Turks was not genocide; it was war, war that engulfed the Turks and the Armenians in 1915. This conflict was the last in the series of the nineteenth century Turco-Russian wars. It was those wars that destroyed the Armenians in Anatolia together with many Muslims.

Between 1820 and 1920 Russians forcibly evacuated and killed many of the two million Muslims, mainly with the help of the Armenians. Those who fled found refuge in the Ottoman state. In the process, whole nations, Crimean Tatars, Abkhazians, Circassians ceased to exist in their ancestral homes.[143] In the same period about 600,000 Armenians went from the Ottoman state to Russia, and two million Muslims came from Russia to Turkey. Once again the suffering was far from one-sided. McCarthy emphasises what he calls the "historical truth" that Russian imperial expansion upset the traditional balance of the peoples of the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia. All the peoples suffered. In terms of number of deaths and relocations, those who suffered most were the Crimean and Caucasian Muslims. "If any people were the victims of genocide, it was the Crimean Tatars, victims in their own homeland, of a planned extermination by (Peter) and Catherine, and ending with Joseph Stalin. Yet those who are too willing to consider the Muslims as the agents of genocide seem strangely unwilling to consider Muslims as its victim... It is a story of human suffering that, like most such stories, has no hero and no villain, only victims - human victims, whether Turkish or Armenian" remarks McCarthy.[144]

Unfortunately, that is not the way the story has been told. Instead of the truth of a human disaster, a great myth has arisen, the myth of the 'evil Turk' and the 'good Armenian'. This myth has been generally believed by non-Armenians because it fits well into a larger -centuries-old myth - the 'Terrible Turk'. To the Europeans, who had feared the Turk for more than five centuries, the myth of the "Armenian genocide seemed just one more example of what they had been taught was the savagery of the Turk. It spoke to a prejudice that had been nurtured by textbooks, sermons, folk tales, and ancestral fears of the horsemen riding out of the East. The false image of the Turk was too strong to be affected by facts."[145]

Little attention is paid to the fact that in 1800 a vast Muslim land existed in Anatolia, the Balkans, and southern Russia. By 1923 only Anatolia, eastern Thrace and a section of the southeastern Caucasus remained as Muslim land. The Balkan Muslims were largely gone, dead or forced to migrate, the remainder living in pockets of settlement in Greece, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The same fate had overcome the Muslims of the Crimea, the northern Caucasus and Russian Armenia - they were simply gone or exterminated. Millions of Muslims, most of them Turks, died; millions fled to what is today Turkey. "Between 1821 and 1922 more than five million Muslims were driven from their lands. Five and one-half million Muslims died, some of them killed in wars, others perishing as refugees from starvation and disease", points out McCarthy.[146]

Despite the historical importance of Muslim losses, it is not to be found in textbooks. The exile and mortality of Muslims is not known. The traditional view of the history of the Balkans, the Caucasus and Anatolia is less than complete, if not misleading, because the histories of the Ottoman Muslim minority groups are taken out of context. A major part of that context is the suffering of the Muslims, which took place in the same region, and at the same time, as the sufferings of the Christians, and often transcended them.

McCarthy also believes that histories of Turco-Armenian relations are "historical distortions", many of them. The "Armenian question" is seldom mentioned in print without half-truths and falsification. In fact, in the USA and Western Europe we have seen a new wave of false history. Armenian apologists have succeeded in tying themselves to those who wish never to forget the sufferings of the Jewish Holocaust, and now the Armenian experience is being portrayed as a "holocaust". Television shows and newspaper articles have repeated and reinforced the old myth, accepted because Europeans and Americans have never been told the truth. One American professor, Stanford Shaw, and his family, have been physically attacked by Armenian extremists for his statements on the fate of the Armenians, whilst another professor, Bernard Lewis, has been taken to court for "denying the Armenian genocide". "Nevertheless the truth must be spoken. The best weapon against such myths is the truth", declares McCarthy.[147]

Other Western scholars and writers, too, agree that, rarely in history have facts been deliberately so distorted as to give a completely wrong picture, as the Armenians have done for more than a century. They succeeded in deceiving the public opinion of the Christian world because they posed as a martyred nation in the cause of Christ, and clamoured that they have been "massacred" by the "fanatical, barbarous and infidel" Turkish Muslims in the name of religion.[148]

In conclusion, it can be stressed that, in the light of archival material, it is abundantly clear that the peoples of Anatolia, both Muslim and non-Muslim, became unwittingly, reluctantly, or voluntarily, the instruments and victims of the major Powers that had only one main purpose: their own self-interest, as reflected in the secret agreements they contracted among themselves during the Great War for the partition of the Ottoman state. In those agreements, as indeed in the Treaty of Lausanne which wound up the Ottoman state, one searches in vain to find any mention of the promises those Powers made to the non-Muslims of that state -promises which they forgot as soon as their own interests were secured.[149]

These imperialist and colonialist Powers have been mainly responsible for the tragedy that befell the peoples of Anatolia; to which, admittedly, various weak and incompetent Ottoman governments have also contributed. On the other hand, one must not forget the responsibility of some of the leaders of the Ottoman Christian communities, who allowed themselves, and influenced their people, to become the instruments of those Powers, and thus contributed tremendously to that tragedy.

Appendix

WAR-TIME DISINFORMATION AND THE "BLUE BOOK"

The publication in 1916, of the British war-time disinformation ‘report’ under the title The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16, which came to be known as the ‘Blue Book’, was masterminded by Arnold Toynbee, a member of the Masterman propaganda bureau in London, on the instigation of Viscount James Bryce. Lord Bryce had been inciting the Armenian militants to rebellion since the publication in 1877 of his book, in which he remarked: "Why... do the Armenians not rise in rebellion... as their forefathers did against the Seleucids and the Persians?"1

Following the revolt of Ottoman Armenians in 1914-15, on the instigation by the Allies (mainly by Russia, France and Britain), in order to dismember the Ottoman state, and the eruption of a civil war between the Armenians and the Turks, the British Intelligence and Information Services, some political and military advisers and Armenophile enthusiasts such as Lord Bryce, Arnold Toynbee, Aneurin Williams, and others, urged the British government to publicise the Turco-Armenian incidents as ‘Armenian massacres’. Internally, it was hoped that this would arose, among the British public, more interest in ‘the little allies of the Entente’, the Armenians, as David Lloyd George described them, and hatred towards the Turks, whilst, externally, it would divert international attention from the atrocious persecution of the Jews by Britain’s ally, Russia, which had intensified during the war. It would also stimulate the neutral countries with pro-Entente tendencies, such as the USA, Greece and Hashemite Arabs, to join the fray.

Harold D. Laswell, observes that the Allies indulged in extensive propaganda (disinformation) during the First World War in order to establish friendly relations with neutral states, to convince those states of the justice of their war-aims, and to procure their support. The Allies knew that the best way to draw the neutrals to their side was by portraying their enemies as ‘inhuman creatures’.2 That is exactly what the ‘Blue Book’ aimed to do.

The task of collecting the material, mainly from Armenian sources, and of writing the ‘report’, was undertaken by the well-known Turcophobe Viscount Bryce, and by Arnold Toynbee.3

Armenian researcher Akaby Nassibian observes that both Aneurin Williams, his associates, and the British Foreign Office, were anxious to have the ‘report’ published in order to stimulate the Allies’ war effort.4 The ‘Blue Book’ turned out to be one of the most successful war-time propaganda exercises of the British government, which used it in inculcating hatred towards, and denigrating its enemies at the time, the Turks, before world opinion, particularly the Islamic world, in rewarding the Armenians with sympathy, flattery and false promises, and in effecting the major coup of finally winning over the wavering pro-Entente neutrals, in particular the USA.

Most of the material used in the ‘Blue Book’ and in other similar publications was supplied to Lord Bryce by the U.S. Ambassador in Istanbul, Henry Morgenthau, who, not knowing Turkish, relied heavily on his Armenian aids.5 Bryce passed on the information to Toynbee, "the distinguished historian and member of Wellington House, who", according to Sanderson and Taylor, "became something of a specialist in atrocity propaganda".6

There is no doubt that the ‘Blue Book’ was the result of collecting together various ‘documents’ without having thoroughly checked their accuracy, and gathered mainly from Armenian sources, or from people sympathetic to the Armenians, i.e. from second or third-hands sources, mostly with the help of Morgenthau, and was issued as an official publication in order to give it more authenticity and credibility.

The work was completed in a short time, and definitely in less than a year. How authentic and reliable a work of ‘historical scholarship’ it is, scholars themselves must judge. Toynbee himself, at first, considered it as "the biggest asset of His Majesty’s Government to solve the Turkish problem in a radical manner, and to have it accepted by the public".7 Much later Toynbee disclosed that the British government had published the ‘Blue Book’ for a special purpose, of which he was unaware at the time. According to him, the Russian armies, when retreating across the Polish-Lithuanian frontier in the spring of 1915, had committed many barbarities against the Jews there, and the advancing German armies had tried to exploit them. The British government had been seriously perturbed. In February 1916 The New York American had advised all American people to demand that "Christian England and Christian France restrain the savagery of their barbarous allies".8 Toynbee believed that the British government was worried lest the American Jewry retaliate against the Allies by throwing its weight against Britain in the debate than going on in the USA. Therefore, the Turco-Armenian incidents in Anatolia had provided the British government with "counter-propaganda" material against the Central powers.9

Both Henry Herbert Asquith and Stanley Baldwin, in their joint memorial presented in 1924 to the then Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, stated in no uncertain terms that the ‘Blue Book’ was "widely used for Allied propaganda in 1916-17, and had an important influence upon American opinion and the ultimate decision of President Woodrow Wilson to enter the war".10

Thus, the ‘Blue Book’, as a ‘masterpiece’ of British war-time propaganda, had a devastating effect. Its wicked influence is still extant as the book is being abused by Armenian activists in perpetuating their hatred towards the Turks, and by certain naive scholars. Its success lay in the fact that it was based on ‘atrocity’ stories. British propaganda was geared towards such stories, real, exaggerated, or even fabricated;11 because disinformers could flog them to journalists and correspondents, who would then flash them under banner headlines in their journals.12 Arthur Ponsonby explains that "the injection of the poison of hatred into men’s minds by means of falsehood is a greater evil in wartime than the actual loss of life. The defilement of the human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body".13

One of the most notorious ‘atrocity story’ of the entire war was the so-called ‘corpse-conversion factory’, where the Germans were accused of boiling down bodies to make soap. The story was completely fabricated -it was finally exposed in 1925 when it was discussed in the House of Commons.14 Most of the wartime ‘atrocity stories’ were fabricated, or exaggerated tremendously; so was the myth of the ‘deliberate extermination of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915’.

James Morgan Read observes: "Lying is an act of conscious deception. Much of British atrocity propaganda was unconscious deception built upon erroneous reports and impressions".15 It was the British government itself, which, between 1914 and

1918, had demonstrated to the world the enormous power of propaganda,16 a legacy which later propagandists followed suit.

[1] For the protégé system, see S.R.Sonyel, "The Protégé System in the Ottoman Empire", Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol.2, no.l, Oxford, January 1991, pp.56-66. For the protégé system, see S.R.Sonyel, "The Protégé System in the Ottoman Empire", Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol.2, no.l, Oxford, January 1991, pp.56-66.

[2] Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, Vol.1, The Central Lands. New York, 1982.

[106] PRO FO 371/2483/15633, Admiralty to Foreign Office, transmitting a report of the proceedings off the Syrian coast from 14 to 27 December 1914 of HMS Doris; File FO 371/2489 is full of documents on Armenian and other Christian espionage against the Turks; see also FO 371/3950/114458.

3 On how the propaganda material was collected and masterfully utilised, see Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime, New York, 1917, and Michael Sanderson and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, 1914-1918, London, 1983.

Prof. Dr. Salahi R. Sonyel was born in Cyprus in 1932. After graduating from the English School he served as a civil servant in the British Colonial Administration until 1957 when he was granted a scholarship to attend the Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He read Political Science, Economics and Education at Queen’s and was awarded the degrees of B.A., and M.A., and the Diploma in Education. He then carried out research at Birkbeck College in Political (Diplomatic) History, and was conferred the degree of Ph. D. by the University of London.

His previous publications include The Ottoman Armenians – Victims of Great Power Policy, London, 1987, Minorities and the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire, Ankara, 1993, and The Great War and the Tragedy of Anatolia, Ankara, 2000, and numerous articles on Turco-Armenian relations.

He is currently a visiting Professor at the Near East University, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, and an honorary member of the Turkish Historical Society, Ankara.

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